


watching stars collide

by hydianway



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Endless Cups of Tea, Equally Endless Descriptions of the Weather, First War with Voldemort, Gardens & Gardening, Lie Low At Lupin's, M/M, Smoking, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 15:43:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5211473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydianway/pseuds/hydianway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus and Sirius, a flat in the colder seasons of 1981, and how everything falls apart.</p><p>Then, a cottage on the edge of a cliff in the early summer of 1995 as they put it back together again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	watching stars collide

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to F for the beta, and S for looking over this too, it was very much appreciated. also, the title comes from the daughter song [shallows.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlUAO52WOrE)
> 
> written for the 2015 r/s games-- this version has been edited from the version you will find [here](http://rs-games.livejournal.com/191774.html), and i think this one is (hopefully) better.

 

* * *

 

 

**_I: The unravelling_ **

 

 

_Maestoso, doloroso:_

This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us.

Surely it is a privilege to approach the end

still believing in something.

— Louise Glück, from the poem _October_

 

 

 

_January, 1981_

 

‘It’s bloody _freezing_ , Remus, what are we doing?’ Sirius huffs out a cloudy breath onto the night air and stomps his feet against the compact snow on the footpath.

‘We’re stargazing,’ Remus says, only half serious as he looks up to the overcast sky, grimy and tinted orange through the glow of the streetlamps. He’s holding a cigarette between the index and middle fingers of his left hand; he watches as the smoke trails up into the air.

‘It’s not a very good night for it,’ says Sirius, grinning. ‘It’s more like cloud-gazing.’

Remus rolls his eyes and almost-grins in return. ‘Not the point.’

‘You just like standing out here in the cold, smoking and thinking about how dreadfully _artistic_ it all is, probably.’

‘I don’t want to stink up the flat,’ Remus says, ‘and you know me, can’t go more than a few hours without a fag or I get all— you know— irritable, shaky hands. And that’s you, anyway, you’re the one who brought up how dreadfully _artistic_ it is.’

Sirius snorts. ‘Smoke out the window, if you have to. It’s what I do.’

Remus draws in breath, catching slightly as the smoke hits the back of his throat. He grins at Sirius around the end of it.

‘And we all know, whatever Sirius Black does, must be a good idea. Anyway, you don’t really smoke, I know you don’t, you start coughing as soon as a cigarette gets anywhere near you.’

‘I’m right about the poetry though, aren’t I. And pass me that, would you?' Sirius makes a grab for Remus's hand holding the cigarette.

'Fuck off,' Remus says, grinning and moving the his arm out of reach of Sirius's swiping. 'Get your own, I’m not wasting mine on your weak, aristocratic lungs.'

‘It's the least you could do, dragging me out into the cold like this,' Sirius says, ‘come on, hand it over.’

Remus rolls his eyes.

‘Or you could kiss me,' says Sirius, and pouts very unconvincingly. Remus imagines he can see frost coalescing on his eyelashes, resists the urge to brush across them with his thumb.

'You're ridiculous,' he says through a badly suppressed smile. ‘You're not half as funny as you think you are, and not a third as funny as you want to be.'

'Is that a no?' Sirius asks. He moves in closer to Remus, breath clouding the air between them. Remus shivers, only partly from the cold, and steps forward to meet him halfway, the thick fabric of his winter coat and Sirius's forming an indifferent kind of barrier between their bodies. Sirius still feels very solid, he thinks absently, very alive, in a way he’s never quite been able to quantify.

Remus tilts his head down to kiss him, presses his lips to Sirius's and then straightens to grin again, take another drag of his cigarette. ‘Didn’t say that, did I?’ he says, and steps back a little more, breathing out smoke.

‘You tease,’ Sirius says, stepping into him again. ‘That all you got?’

Remus only smirks, and then drops his burnt-out fag onto the snow. ‘Out here it is. Inside?’ he asks, stamping it out.

‘Obviously,’ says Sirius, and seizes him by his upper arms to drag him back into the building.

‘Tea first?’ asks Remus when they get upstairs into the warmth of the apartment, disentangling his limbs from his coat and scarf and moving to the kitchen to put the kettle on. ‘I’m cold.’

Sirius snorts, and comes up behind him on tip toes to hook his chin over Remus's shoulder.

‘I’ll keep you warm,’ he says, and kisses Remus on the side of the neck just above the collar.

‘I’m making tea anyway,’ Remus says, smiling at Sirius as he snorts and shakes his head and walks to the other side of the room to throw himself onto the armchair and start trying to pull off his boots. He’s breaking in a new pair this week— steel capped leather ones, construction worker's boots, really, for all that Sirius hasn't done a day's manual labour in his life— and Remus has spent several evenings practicing his healing charms on some rather horrible blisters. He keeps telling him that if he puts sticking plasters on his heels before he gets the blisters, the blisters won’t happen, but Sirius is remarkably resistant to the idea of treating a wound that doesn’t exist yet.

He switches the kettle on at the wall, and stands with his back to the sink watching Sirius wince at the reopened sores on his heels.

‘You should just put the plasters on,’ he says, and grins as Sirius flips him off without looking up from his examination of his right heel.

‘You put your own plasters on,’ Sirius says, and stands up in his sock feet to walk back over to Remus in the kitchen. He puts his hands at Remus's hips and pulls their bodies together, tips his head back a little. He stands on his tiptoes and brings a hand up to the back of Remus's head to pull him down for a kiss.

The kitchen is dim, the only light coming in from the lamp in the living room and the outside streetlights, kettle hissing away at Remus's elbow and the wobble of the stove as it bumps against Remus's hip.

Kissing is funny, he thinks, and leans into it, the taste of cold and tar at his lips and Sirius's.

Remus pulls back as the water starts boiling to pour it into the mug, and the tea steeps on the bench as Sirius decides to acquaint himself with the spot on the side of Remus's neck just under his jaw, which is either ticklish, uselessly so, or liable to make him weak at the knees. 

Tonight he's ticklish; Remus pushes him away, laughing, and spins around to get the bottle of milk out of the fridge.

They sit in the living room in front of the tv set, Remus with his cup of tea and Sirius with his perpetually jiggling left foot, constant tense motion even when he’s relaxed.

‘Are you sure you don’t want a cup of tea?’ says Remus.

Yes,’ says Sirius.

Remus pulls off his cardigan, careful, and readjusts the neckline of his t-shirt, pulls it down to scratch at a point just below his collarbone, tilting his head a little to one side, smooths out the long line of his neck. H e can feel Sirius's eyes on him, warm like the fire burning in the grate behind him. It's odd, the feeling of Sirius wanting him, quiet and restrained as it is right now, but he can feel all the potential behind it, or at least, he imagines he can. Like looking at a pile of kindling on the hearth, and knowing the matches are in the second drawer down by the knives, knowing how easy it would be to set it all to burning.

They sit in silence till Remus finishes his tea, allowing familiarity and the flicker of the mute television to fill in the spaces between them.

‘Well,’ says Sirius, and Remus puts the mug on the floor by the foot of the sofa. ‘Come on, then.’

‘Oh no dear, I think I’m too tired tonight,’ Remus says, smile sitting wry and lopsided on his lips.

Sirius rolls his eyes.

‘I know you don’t mean it,’ he says. ‘You ridiculous tease.’

He reaches out a hand for Remus to take. ‘Up you get, then.’

Remus lets him pull him to his feet, and grins as he’s pulled down for another kiss, this time with the full promise of whatever had been abbreviated just a bit earlier.

They make it to the bedroom, slowly, no rush for anything, and kiss against the door frame till Sirius decides he doesn’t want to wait any longer, and pulls him into bed.

He wonders when having sex started to be, not less like throwing himself headfirst off a cliff on purpose but more like knowing that the water when it caught him wouldn’t also kill him. Slipping into it like a second skin, a whole new experience of a body, another person.

He knocks his elbows against the headboard somehow, and now he and Sirius are kissing like they really are underwater, impeded movement and no-one’s arms in the right place, maybe drowning, but there are other reasons to be gasping for air.

Afterwards they lie pressed together with Remus on his side, his leg thrown over one of Sirius’s, and his arms wedged somewhere under his shoulderblades, and what is probably some of Sirius’s hair tickling under his nose, or maybe a feather from inside the stuffing from one of the pillows that’s gotten free again.

It’s all quite uncomfortable, really, Remus thinks, which might matter more if he started letting it. Under the covers, their skin where it touches is sticky with sweat and too hot, and where his arm rests on top of the blanket the cool air is brushing goosebumps onto his shoulders.

‘I—’ says Sirius.

‘Yeah?’ says Remus.

'I like you quite a lot, you know,' he says. It’s oddly serious, the way he says it, and Remus feels his breath catch. 

It still feels like a dance sometimes, this, stepping around each other in time to music neither of them can hear quite right, even after a year and a half, longer as friends. He wouldn’t say— it would seem strange to say, anything but maybe what had already been said— I like you quite a lot you know, with all the familiarity that implies and the precariousness too.

‘I do too,’ says Remus. ‘Like you, that is.’

Sirius grins. ‘Quite a lot?’ he says.

‘Quite a lot,’ says Remus, and kisses him on the shoulder.

 

&&&

 

The two of them go over to James and Lily’s for post-New Year's/Christmas-sorry-we-couldn't-manage-something-before-now dinner. That, and to see Harry who gets bigger by the day, and by all evidence seems to have fat cheeks just like James’s in the old photos Mrs. Potter used to like to show them. James’ abject mortification had always been a source for Sirius's rather vindictive glee, though Remus recalls now that he had ended up being quite cruel about it. 

Sirius had spent a week pinching his cheeks and cooing over him like he was still the baby in the photos. All of them felt a bit like frayed edges rubbing against each other by that point in the summer, just after Sirius had run away from home and none of them unsure of how to proceed but also, unable to disentangle themselves long enough to be able to figure anything out about it.  

‘At least I have some fucking baby photos,’ is what James had said, in the end, and Sirius had gone red, then white, and then stormed out of the room. James had kicked a chair, then followed a second later, turning at the last minute out into the garden rather than tailing Sirius up to his bedroom on the third floor.

That had been their first proper fight, James and Sirius, or the first with the grown-up bite of things that couldn't be fixed, and it had led to a week at least of rattling discontentment within the summer-open walls and windows of the house. Peter had vanished off back to his family and Remus had become the rope in an unwelcome game of tug-of-war, neutral ground amidst ever-growing lists of grievances against each other; past and present, real and imagined, and then against family and teachers and in the end the whole wide world, until they’d burnt themselves out on it and gone back to being friends again. 

And if the punches to each other’s shoulders bruised more than they usually did, the marks faded, and in the end so did the grudge.  Funny, the sort of things you find at the breaking point.

Remus is thinking about it because of Harry, the breathtaking similarity,and because they’re all stretched much too thin now but since it’s Christmas they’re all pretending not to be at any point no more than forty seconds from losing it entirely. Which— that's always the way of it, a bit, but it’s more pronounced this year: things are not as they seem, and not as they should be.

Sirius had run in the door at ten past one, just as Remus is about to give in and leave him to find his way to James and Lily’s on his own (easier said than done, given the new wards around their home, which as it is is somewhere in the countryside they haven’t even told Remus, and James is supposed to collect them from the Order safe house in Blackburn).

He smells a little of the river and more of ash, halfway running in through the door, wild-haired and breathing harder than usual.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he says. ‘Got— held up. Sorry. Give me five minutes.’

He puts a hand out to steady himself at the wall, and closes his eyes to draw in breath for a few moments.

‘Are you alright?’ asks Remus, watching the tremor in his arm against the wall. ‘Did you—’

‘Me?’ he says. ‘Fine.’ He heaves a breath and pushes off the wall. ‘Five minutes, then we’ll go.’

‘Are you sure—’

‘I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks, Remus,’ says Sirius crossly. ‘We’re not— I need to see James— just because I got into a bit of a scrape, we’re not suddenly not going.’

Remus looks at him more closely, examining his face for signs of visible damage, and notices some dirt and bruising along his right cheekbone and up the side of his face, two scratches standing out in a dark bloody red at the hairline.

He hisses in sympathy and reaches out a hand like his touch might help. Sirius flinches out of his reach.

‘Leave it,’ snaps Sirius, brushing away his hands. ‘It’s fine.’

‘Okay,’ says Remus. ‘But do you want me to get out the—’

‘I said leave it,’ Sirius says. ‘I can do healing magic. I’ll deal with it.’ 

He walks across the room to slam the bathroom door. Remus hears the shower start running, and a thump on the floor that’s probably Sirius trying to pull off one of his boots. 

He walks across the room to sit on the chair by the window and waits for Sirius to finish, staring out the window and up to the pale grey of the overcast sky. He didn’t think Sirius had a mission today— but then again, what did he know, anymore. He’s barely been in contact with anyone from the Order for months now, outside of his two contacts and he doesn’t think they know any more than he does, particularly not about the exact details of watches and assignments and suspected Death Eater activity.

Dumbledore’s way of keeping them all secure, he supposes. Remus sighs, and turns around as the water shuts off in the bathroom. Sirius emerges a few seconds later trailing wisps of steam, and walks across the hallway to the bedroom. Remus catches a glimpse of the purpling skin down the side of his torso, above the towel tied about his waist.

He also catches a glimpse of Sirius’s glare— _don’t even start_ — so he keeps his mouth shut, and goes back to staring out the window as Sirius slams that door too, and crashes around behind it for a few more minutes, presumably trying to get dressed. 

Remus smiles as he walks out, a little tentative but still quite genuine. Sirius stops in the middle of the room and plants his feet, arms crossed and still frowning. 

‘We going now?’

‘Oh,’ says Remus, frowning. ‘Right.’

He stands up too, and they join hands for Sirius to apparate them to their arranged meeting place, the top room of an old cottage, where James is waiting for them, brow furrowed and cleaning his glasses, sat up against an old trunk in the corner. 

‘Alright?’ he asks, when they arrive. They nod. ‘Good,’ he says, putting his glasses back on and getting to his feet. 

‘We’d best be off then, there was some muttering about this place being compromised last meeting and I’d rather not find out if that particular rumour’s got any truth to it, if it’s all the same to you.’

He smiles, a harsh set to his teeth Remus doesn’t recall seeing before now and a bitter twist to the corners of his lips. 

Sirius shrugs, and Remus makes a gesture like— go ahead. 

They let themselves out of the house, and off down a little road that heads away from the centre of the town, from where Remus can see row upon row of plain terraced houses stretching away up the hill. 

‘It’s a bit of a way out,’ says James. ‘Easier to ward and enchant one house in the middle of nowhere than a single flat in amongst a whole bunch of them, and less danger to the neighbours.'  He shrugs. ‘It’s a bit lonely though,’ he says, clearing his throat. ‘Glad you’re here.’

‘You too,’ says Remus, and gives him a brief squeeze across the shoulders. 

‘Were you _lonely_ without us.’ Sirius beams, and half-tackles James sideways across the road with his hug. ‘James, Jamesie, my dearest Prongsy, did you miss our ugly mugs, I knew you loved us really even when we decided to put frogspawn down your trouser legs.'

James pushes him off, laughing, and Remus sees Sirius wince, the way he holds his arm gingerly, just out from his side, as they walk the rest of the way, through the messy paddocks of weeds and runaway sheep. He pulls out his pack of cigarettes as they walk, offers it around them. 

James takes one, and they walk in not-uncomfortable silence the rest of the way to the house. 

It’s more strained at the Potter's than even Remus had expected, when they get there. They stand at the gate— or at least, what Remus assumes is a gate; all he can see is a low stone wall stretching unbroken around a messy looking country paddock— for five minutes, while James unlocks all the charms on the thing, and then another five on the other side while he sets them all back up again. 

Lily greets them at the door with a sleepy Harry in her arms, and for a moment it looks like it might all start going better, then: ‘Where’s Pete?’ Sirius asks, looking around. ‘I thought he was coming, I assumed, since we were late—’

Lily frowns, biting her lip. ‘He owled this morning,’ she says. ‘Can’t make it.’

‘Oh,’ says Sirius. ‘Right.’

James shifts awkwardly next to them, then walks over to take Harry from Lily’s arms. ‘Living room?’ he says. They all nod, and James shows them the way through the house, shuffling their way down a cramped little corridor to a small sitting room, which looks like it's owned by a Muggle woman about sixty years their senior.

‘So,’ says James, once he has Harry settled properly on his lap. ‘How’ve you lot been.’ 

‘Good,’ says Sirius, as Remus says, ‘Alright,’ and they settle back into the grooves of conversation without a second thought, jokes and rhythm that are not so very different from their schooldays. 

It still feels strange though, with Peter missing, and Lily has to get up halfway through presents to check on the wards around the house— ‘Have to do it every few hours,’ she says around a tired smile. ‘At least Harry’s got us up all hours of the day and night anyway, it could be worse.’ James grimaces at them from behind her back, shrugs, then goes back to showing Harry the pop-up book that Remus has gotten for him. 

He laughs and waves his little fists in excitement as the wheels of the carriage on the page start spinning, and the brightly coloured contraption moves across the paper and into the gates of the perfectly miniaturised castle that’s sprung up in the middle of the book. 

‘Thanks for this, Moony,’ says James. ‘It’s really good to have more stuff to keep Harry busy— with all the, you know. It’s difficult, sometimes.’ 

He pushes his hair back with his free hand, and grins across the room at Remus, more relaxed but still with the same tension that had coloured his smile earlier. 

‘No problem,’ says Remus, trying for a grin of his own. He can feel its stiffness, and he’s sure James can see it too. 

‘Hey, I’m sorry about all this,’ says James. He pushes his hair back again, and readjusts the glasses on his nose, looking between Remus and Sirius and biting his lip.

He’s still bouncing Harry gently on one knee, propping him upright with the same arm that’s holding the book up in front of them, and he makes it look so effortless Remus wonders if he’d have to know him any less well not to be able to spot the dark circles under his eyes, the fine lines that have started to creep up around the sides of his mouth. 

He feels a pang, deep in his gut, for all the mucking about being useless and messy and twenty-one that James won’t ever get to do. 

‘It’s not your fault,’ he says. ‘It’s—’

‘It’s all shit,’ says Sirius, his voice cutting unexpectedly through the air like the rough blade of a saw. ‘But it’s not your fault, mate,’ he says, more carefully, at James’s frown. ‘Sorry,’ he adds. ‘About the swearing, I mean,’ he looks at Harry and James, and with slight alarm at Lily, who’s just come back into the room. 

‘It’s alright,’ she says, with a grin to Sirius. ‘He’s not quite old enough to pick up on words just like that. And I think the roast’s about ready, if anyone wants to help me get everything out and onto the table?’ 

Remus and Sirius get back to the flat at about eleven, and sit down in the living room.

‘Where were you, this morning?’ Remus asks, his tone almost conspicuous for its lack of any accusation as they sit under only the light of the dim lamp in the corner. 

‘Doesn’t matter,’ says Sirius. His voice is dead flat. Remus tries again. 

‘Was it for the Order?’ he asks. 

Sirius grunts. ‘I’m tired,’ he says, pushing himself up from where he’s plunked himself down on the sofa. ‘I’m really bloody tired, and I’m going to bed.’  

Remus frowns, and sinks further back into the sofa, crossing his arms across his chest. ‘Alright,’ he says. ‘I’ll be—’ I’ll be there in a minute, he thinks. He doesn’t think Sirius wants to hear it; already halfway across the room away from him and heading for the bathroom. 

Instead of following, Remus goes to the kitchen and makes himself a mug of strong tea. Then, after a moment of reflection, he tips quite a bit of it down the sink and replaces the lost liquid with a generous amount of Sirius’s awful vodka, and walks back to the armchair by the window in the darkest corner of the room.

He stares morosely down onto the street, trying not to think about anything, till the alcohol catches up with him, which is when he has to lie down on the creaky old sofa and go to sleep, too tired and oddly wrung out to keep himself upright. 

He doesn’t remember it, but he must’ve found a blanket to pull over himself in the night, because he awakens to the scratch of wool against his jawline and Sirius looming over him from the end of the sofa.

‘So why’d you sleep on the couch then,’ he says, grinning down at Remus. ‘That thing’s fucking diabolical, loose springs every which where, absolute murder on your back, and I’m not even an arthritic bloody werewolf like you are.’

‘You’re cheerful this morning,’ says Remus, stretching out his stiff muscles as much as he can without having to sit up. He feels a little ill, hungover probably, but also just plain tired. 

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ says Sirius, a look of genuine and benign puzzlement flickering across his features. He blinks it off, and walks into the kitchen. ‘Do you want bacon and eggs, for breakfast? I think we’ve got some— stuff, or, I can cobble something together— or maybe— oh,’ he says, wincing slightly as he looks at whatever’s in the inside of the fridge.

‘Well—’ Remus starts. ‘Yesterday you— oh, whatever.’ He rubs his eyes and gets to his feet, stretches for a few moments, and walks over to join Sirius in the kitchen. 

He puts an arm over Sirius’s shoulder where he’s standing in front of the sink and kisses him on the cheek. 

‘What’ve we got for this breakfast thing, then.’ 

Sirius grimaces exaggeratedly, then grins as he looks up at Remus. ‘I think we’re having cereal again,’ he says. 

‘Right,’ says Remus, turning to the pantry for the coco pops.

‘Don’t look too closely at the rest of the fridge though, when you go for the milk,’ says Sirius, as Remus turns the other way to open the‘It’s a bit—’

‘Ah,’ says Remus, who already has the fridge half open, and can already see more mould on one orange in the veggie bin than he’s ever thought possible. He grabs the milk bottle, and slams the door shut as quickly as possible. ‘Got it.’ 

Sirius smiles at him. Remus smiles back. ‘Sort it later?’ he says. 

‘Yeah,’ says Sirius. 

They smile at each other. 

 

  

_October, 1981_

 

Remus knows he’s fucked— that they’re both fucked, and maybe the whole world with it, the night drawing in from all sides and no expectation any more of the dawn to arrive, irritation creeping under skin and up spines at the smallest of things and sharp snapping teeth at their ankles—  the end of it all is that he knows he’s fucked when he stops wanting to come home.

It’s autumn now, the brittle-cold of winter just knocking at the door, spidery fingers of chill reaching around the windows, up through the cracks in the floorboards. Remus has always found himself quieter in the cold, thin twig fingers pale white in the air, and fragile like the bright filmy mist of condensation on windows in the early morning.

This year the onset of cold nearly surprises him, the fact that the passage of time has not halted and the seasons still do change, that the world draws on outside of their self imposed almost-exile of underground-waged war and terror inspiring in him something akin to awe, gathering in his chest a small point of dullness, solid and as close to hopeful as it is to despairingly frightened.

Remus is trying not cry in the kitchen when Sirius comes back to the flat. There's no reason for it, or there is every reason only lacking in specifics, but the inside of his head feels like the nuclear winter and his skin as if he's been bruised all over his body. Maybe he has been; the kind of bruises you don’t see but feel like they run bone deep anyway; maybe he’s never not been bruised, the whole of his life that he can remember; and maybe bruise is the wrong word anyway when it implies so much impermanence, specificity in the scope of its hurt. He is very tired, is what he means, and the barriers between himself and the rest of the world are thin.

Next to him there are dishes piled up in the sink and his arms are wrapped tight around his torso, rib bones firmly felt through thick knit jumper and more delicate flesh. Outside the sky is the grey-orange-red of city twilight, dust and the smoke of the season’s early fires in the air and in his lungs.

The tread of Sirius's boots is muffled on the carpet as he walks in the door, and Remus braces himself for the nearness of the storm.

‘Alright?’ Sirius grins as he walks into the kitchen, wild windswept hair and cheeks pink from the cold. Cheerful, then. A pressure shift in the barometer.

Remus nods, doesn’t move, and tries not to feel the softening in his body at Sirius's warmth.

‘Sure?’ Sirius asks. ‘You look—’

‘I’m fine,’ Remus says. ‘I—’

Sirius walks over to lace their hands together, presses him up against the bench with his body and kisses him, brief and dry on the lips.

He pulls him away from the bench, tries to spin his stiff body round the kitchen. ‘You’re in a mood,’ he says. ‘You shouldn’t be; it’s too nice an evening for you to be in a mood.’

It isn’t, Remus thinks, but Sirius smiles and it’s like someone strikes a match underneath his sternum.

‘Have you eaten?’ he asks.

Sirius shakes his head.

‘Takeaways, then?’

‘Why not,’ says Sirius. Still looking at him with the strange little smile still at his lips.

These are the most words they’ve spoken to each other in a month. 

It isn’t all their doing— or rather, it is, but it’s the Order too with Sirius off doing god-knows-what any hour of the day and night and Remus away too half the time, without very much space in his life for talking to anyone in any capacity not borne out of necessity.

Sometimes when he goes by Diagon Alley to pass something on for Florean Fortescue he stops for a chat, but as much as he enjoys discussing the socio-politics of various goblin and occasionally Muggle revolutions across history it isn’t really the same as having someone around all the time to natter idly on to whenever you like.

‘Indian?’ asks Sirius. Remus blinks, realises he’s started staring out the window again.

‘Hm?’ says Remus. ‘Oh. If you want.’

Sirius rolls his eyes, and goes to find the telephone.

They walk down the street to the takeaway shop on the corner, which isn’t Remus's favourite but it is the closest, and Sirius likes their naan bread best anyway so it tends to even out. They walk in silence, and eat at opposite ends of the kitchen table. 

It’s dark outside when they finish, and Remus pushes the last of the naan towards Sirius, who accepts with a grin.

Afterwards, they walk into the living room and sit on the sofa, with the telly playing at low volume in front of them. He feels a little like he’s cracking down the middle now, the strain of the silence crushing at him. It isn't right, pretending like everything is fine between them, when it isn't, and it can't be. 

‘I miss you,’ Remus says, when he feels like he can’t not anymore. ‘I really miss you.’

‘I’m right here,’ says Sirius. ‘I haven’t— I haven’t _gone_ anywhere. How—’

He looks confused, a little angry. 

‘You’re never here, though,’ says Remus. ‘You’re—’ _Distant, often. Cold, too ready to shout. Vanishing by degrees. When you’re happy, I wonder when it’s all going to go wrong._  

‘Let’s not do this now,’ he says instead, feeling colder again at the thought of an argument, another small earthquake. ‘You’re here, I missed you, let’s—’

‘No, I want to talk about this! If you feel like you’ve missed me, when I’ve been here all along, I think we should talk.’ Sirius has always been like this; quick to anger and slow to let go. Like a dog with a bone, James used to say. It was funnier, back then. 

‘You’re _here_ ,’ Remus says, feeling a little like he’s being crushed, butterfly wings strangled in his throat. But he keeps talking; once the words have started coming, they won't stop. ‘You’re here, sometimes anyway, but you’re not— it isn’t the same. You used to tell me things. We used to talk, and you’d actually act like you wanted me round more than once in a blue moon, and it was, you know, someone to do the washing up with and pretend like everything wasn’t going to absolute shit, but you’re—’

‘You’ve not been the easiest person to live with yourself,’ Sirius says, abrupt and painful. ‘You’ve been tired and snappish for weeks now, months. Merlin, it’s a fucking miracle I’ve managed to put up with you as long as this without fighting about it.’

‘Oh, sod _off_ ,’ says Remus, the sensation of being kicked in the guts hissing up his throat now, anger and viciousness twisting at his innards. ‘You’ve been just as bloody tired and _snappish_ as I have, only instead of trying to deal with your feelings on your own like a normal person you just rush out and find a fight to get yourself into, and then I have to deal with you when you’re moody _and_ you’ve got a black eye, on top of enough bruised pride for the two of us.’

Sirius gapes at him, and stands, and starts pacing across the end of the room.

‘No, _you_ fuck off,’ he says.

‘Sirius,’ says Remus, ‘can’t you try to—’

‘I can’t believe you’re trying to take the high ground here,’ says Sirius, ignoring him. ‘Poor, long-suffering Remus, has to put up with all those troublesome friends of his, not to mention the useless fucking layabout of a boyfriend he’s saddled himself with, don’t know _how_ he does it. Well you know what? If you hate me that much, you can just bloody _leave_. The door’s right there, and I’m not going to stop you if you don’t want to _deal with it_  anymore.’

Sirius turns to kick at one of the skirting boards. Remus rolls his eyes dramatically— two can play at that game, and by god is Sirius predictable— and Sirius wheels back around to face him. His posture is frustration made flesh, defensiveness coiled tight up in his shoulders and arcing through every line in his body.

_‘What_.’

‘I didn’t fucking say _anything_ ,’ says Remus, trying to inject as much ice into his voice as possible. He hates being angry, hates how much he wants to keep trying to find some way to really _hurt_ someone, Sirius, how he doesn’t want it to stop ever because if he hates being angry it’s nothing to how he hates being able to look back on it, regretting everything and feeling so, so stupid, and sitting with ribs flayed open wanting and wanting to pull every word he said back into his body and knowing he can’t because the wreckage is already strewn across the floor.  

‘ _Fuck you_ ,’ says Sirius, and storms over to the window side of the room to pace in front of the curtains. ‘I just— _fuck_.’ There are tears on his cheeks now, Remus realises, glinting yellowish light from the old lightbulb on the ceiling. Remus wants to punch him, scream, bring down the roof on the both of them.

‘You know what,’ he says, voice harsh as he's ever heard it. ‘What if I did leave. What if I just walked out the door, and left you here alone in this _shitty_ flat, with no one to laugh at your _stupid_ jokes or bug you to pick your clothes up off the floor. I could—’

He grabs his wand off the seat of the sofa where he'd put it down before, and jams it into his front pocket, then marches for the door. 'I could just go.'

‘Please don’t,’ says Sirius, as Remus places his hand on the doorknob, makes to turn it. He’s gone pale, and he sounds harsh, like the words are tearing up the inside of his throat.

Remus stills.

‘Don’t,’ says Sirius. ‘Don't fucking leave, just don't, even if you hate me, I'd rather you did it here than under some bridge or on poor Dorcas's sofa.’

Remus turns away from the door.

‘I don’t hate you,’ he says, finally, and every vicious thing that has been keeping him animate drains out of his body. He walks dreamlike back across the room and sits down heavily on the sofa. ‘Sirius, I don’t hate you at all. I don’t want to leave. That’s the whole fucking _point_.

‘I hate Voldemort, and I hate the Death Eaters and this stupid fucking war, and I hate the weather getting colder, and I hate how tired I am and how it never goes away and I hate that you have to keep putting yourself in danger, and how worried I have to be about everything, all the time, but I don’t hate you. I am so, so far from hating you that it’s almost funny. And I miss you, I _missed_ you, but I think—’

‘Remus,’ Sirius says. ‘Remus, I— I didn’t— you can't think that—’

‘Please leave me alone,’ says Remus. His voice comes out wrong, and he doesn’t want to be alone, not really, but he doesn’t want to have to talk to anyone either.

He shuts his eyes and listens as Sirius's footsteps move away from him across the room and into the kitchen.

Remus stays where he is, letting the silence fill his head, buzzing at his ears.

Eventually, he stands up and walks to the kitchen. It feels like the thing to do, and they have to make up sometime. They always do.

Sirius looks up when he walks into the room. He’s taken up Remus's earlier position at the bench on the other side of the room, staring out onto the now-dark streets below them, the clouded-over sky.

There’s nothing to say, Remus realises. Or there is, but it’s all things both of them would rather cut off a limb than have to even think about. Sirius ducks his head to let Remus into the cupboard above him, and he pulls out two mugs to place them on the bench. Sirius reaches into the back of the pantry for the box of teabags; Remus fills up the electric kettle and flicks down the switch. It feels like an apology, or part of one, accepting some kind of wordless contract to reconciliation.

Remus pours the water into the mugs, and digs the biscuits out of the back of the pantry cupboard; Sirius fetches the milk from the refrigerator.

They take the mugs into the bedroom, and sit cross legged on top of the covers like they used to do back at Hogwarts, and in the weeks between when they'd moved into this flat and when they’d finally replaced the boxes in the living room with a sofa.

‘I don’t suppose you can tell me what you’ve been up to today,’ says Remus. He still feels hollowed out, exposed and raw— like the shell of a passionfruit after someone’s taken a spoon to the insides, a little gruesome and unreal and falsely bloody.

‘No,’ says Sirius. ‘Sorry. You?’

‘Not quite,’ says Remus, and he shifts in place, trying to smooth out a crease in the blanket beneath him. ‘Do you want to hear about the Third Goblin Uprising of 1432, though?’

‘What,’ Sirius says. ‘Why on earth would you want to tell me about the Third Goblin Rebellion of Fourteen-whenever?’

Remus shrugs. ‘Filling the silence,’ he says. ‘Fortescue was telling me about it, yesterday, when I went by with the documents he needed. New book, by the only historian who’s apparently mad enough to keep writing anything even vaguely wizard-critical right now.’

Sirius frowns. ‘Oh.’

‘I didn’t say it would be very interesting.’

‘Obviously not,’ says Sirius.

Remus blinks. He’s forgotten how blunt Sirius can be, or overstated it in his mind so that he doesn't know how to deal with the simple reality of it.

‘Oh, fuck’s sake,’ says Remus. He takes too big a mouthful of tea and it burns the inside of his mouth.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Sirius. He’s gotten ahold of one of the loose threads on the edge of the sheet, and he’s twisting it around the first joint of his index finger like a kind of noose.

‘No— oh, don’t worry about it.’ Remus bites his lip. ‘It is actually quite interesting though. To me.’ He sounds much sulkier than he’d meant to, the bite he’d intended subsumed under a quite-sincere pout.

Sirius had started to frown, to snap back, but he changes the expression halfway along so it turns into more of a smile, lightly amused. ‘Moony,’ he says. ‘Remus. How do you always—’

‘I don’t,’ says Remus. 'I don't mean to do anything.'

They sit there in silence for a few minutes.

‘Do you wish we could go back,’ Remus says eventually. ‘Sometimes, do you want to just— be younger again. In school, before—’

‘Not really,’ says Sirius. ‘I don’t miss much about being a teenager at all.’

‘No,’ says Remus. ‘No, I suppose I don’t either. It was so claustrophobic sometimes, back at Hogwarts. With all of us in the one room all the time, and the same classes and the same mealtimes, and everyone knowing everyone else to the point of— of nausea, sometimes.’

‘I think James actually vomited, that one time, remember when we found—’

‘The old food?’ asks Remus. ‘Down the back of his bed, with the—’

‘That was actually _blue_ , I don’t think I’ve seen anything mouldier before or since. _Merlin_.’

‘I still have nightmares,’ says Remus, ‘that it’s somehow grown a brain, and wants to take revenge on the person who tried to kill it.’

‘Oh, but that was spectacular,’ says Sirius. ‘Levitating it out the window and making it explode? Inspired. The green flames were nice, too.’

Remus smiles. ‘I had to clean that off the side of the building, you know. For detention. Not so much fun, dealing with those flames fifty feet up in the air. And the smell _alone_ —’

‘And I still maintain James should have taken the punishment for that one,’ says Sirius. ‘It was his half-eaten dinner that caused all that fuss in the first place.’

‘I think it was yours, actually,’ says Remus. ‘You just—’

‘I never would have done that,’ Sirius says, frowning, ‘that’s just plain rude, putting old food under a mate's bed. And not even very funny.’

‘No, I’m fairly sure it was you,’ says Remus. ‘You had to apologise about fifty times, remember? He was so pissed off.’

‘Oh,’ says Sirius. ‘Right. I was a real prick, wasn’t I?’ He frowns. ‘Complete fucking bell-end.’

You were,’ says Remus, ‘though that was hardly the worst of it.’

He grins, and clears his throat. ‘And I think you still are,’ he says, ‘just a bit. All you’ve done is moved from awful schoolboy pranks to actual guerrilla warfare.’

‘Probably a better outlet, that,’ says Sirius, then: ‘What a mess.’

He sighs, smile playing rueful at the sides of his mouth, and snaps off the thread he’s been twisting around his finger with a sharp little jerk of the wrist.

‘I know,’ Remus says with his own sigh. ‘It’s all a fucking trainwreck, head-on.’

‘And no-one's even trying to stop it,’ says Sirius, then: ‘Maybe I do wish I was younger, sometimes. I mean, at Hogwarts, at least we still felt safe. I mean— mostly.’

Remus nods.

‘More than a few benefits to living alone though, eh?’ Sirius grins, raising an eyebrow and grinning at Remus. ‘Or, well.’ The smile slips a little, goes all strange and surprise-lopsided.

‘We had a good run of it, for a while,’ says Remus. ‘Before it all— you know. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not really your fault,’ says Sirius.

‘Or yours,’ says Remus. He reaches out a hand to Sirius across the bed. ‘Let’s get the washing up done,’ he says. ‘Have an early night. I’m too fucking tired, for more of this.’

‘I think it’s already late,’ says Sirius, taking the hand. ‘But— yes.’

They wash the dishes side-by-side and in silence, Remus passing dishes along to Sirius with his tea towel, and Sirius drying them by hand to send them by magic into the correct cupboards.

Remus brushes his teeth while Sirius showers, and they dress for bed with their backs to each other in the claustrophobic confines of the bedroom.

It feels like the aftermath of a storm, after the very worst of the debris has been cleared and the streets and the cars are starting to dry up, but you can still feel the shifting pressure the clouds and rain must have ridden in on, still see the leaves blown to the kerb and step on the wormsstraggling across footpaths in the park.

Sirius gets into bed beside him like he’s afraid of startling him, and they lie there in silence, side by side and barely visible to each other in the dim of city starlight through thin curtains. Remus is curled in on his side, Sirius on his back staring up at the ceiling.

‘I missed you too,’ he says. ‘I just—’

Remus tries not to shift, eyes closed, wondering if Sirius is only saying this because he thinks he’s asleep.

‘I don’t know, anymore,’ Sirius says. ‘And I think— I hope things will be different, soon. It’s hard right now to— it doesn’t matter. You— I missed you.’

He goes quiet, then rolls over to face him. ‘Remus?’ he says.

‘Mm?’ says Remus.

‘I—’ He pauses. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

Sirius leans over, and kisses Remus on the cheek. ‘Go to sleep,’ he says.

Remus smiles, and closes his eyes, listening to Sirius’s breathing, and the rustle of the sheets against his legs as he moves restlessly in his sleep.

He wakes up to Sirius still asleep beside him, soft-eyed and stern-mouthed. Remus can see the spots on his chin, which is a little disgusting if he thinks about it at all, but much less so in this setting, in the morning light pressing in from behind the curtains and his hair all rumpled up and messy on the pillowcase.

It might be alright, he thinks. Yesterday feels like a bad dream, the black clouds that had been rolling in off the hills and the floodwaters rising up at the riversides now given way to bright slivers of clear sky and the calm of the waters restored. 

They’re fighting a war, but Sirius is here, and beside him. It might be alright. It might, it might. Hope is deadly, but so very much better than nothing. They are both here, they are both breathing, and that just _might_ be enough to see this through. 

  

&&&

 

A week later, Sirius doesn’t come home like he usually does. With tangled hair and a set to his mouth grim as a tomb, anywhere between the hours of nine pm and six in the morning, but still, coming home. Walking through the door like a gust of wind and motor oil, floorboards creaking beneath his feet. 

Sirius doesn’t come home, and when he sees Dumbledore’s faded head pop into existence from the flames at the hearth, that is when he knows, with the bone-settled chill of wild fears made certainty, that he won’t, maybe ever again.

In the end— though, and isn’t it the ultimate cruelty of this that it’s not an ending at all, though by all accounts it should be, this should end everything, there should not be _existence_ after this let alone _his_ , and yet here he is, here he sits, these are his hands that are cracked-plaster brittle and shaking in front of him, this is his voice he can hear— in the end, that is the least of it.

He kneels in front of the fire for a long time after Dumbledore vanishes back into the embers.

There is— one day, he might have words for what it feels like to kneel down on the hearthrug with, to the best of his knowledge, the entirety of his life and all of his loves, for all their frailty, battered but more or less intact, and to rise on numbed feet, six, twenty, forty-four, an hour and a half of unclear minutes later, still breathing but more or less an entirely new, entirely more broken person than the one he had been whenever he had last engaged enough of his uncooperative muscles to stand upright.

For now— not _nothing_ , but hardly anything else either.

He keeps breathing.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**_II: A reconstruction_ **

 

 

It's coming like the tidal flood beneath the lunar sway,

Imperial, mysterious, in amorous array.

— Leonard Cohen, from the song _Democracy_

 

 

 

_June, 1995_

 

For all its import, the message from Dumbledore when it arrives is barely two sentences. It’s on a scrap of parchment folded down the middle and placed in an envelope, then tied to the leg of a Hogwarts owl and sent on its way.

Remus feels a constriction in his chest at the sight of the owl silhouetted against the evening sky, standing at the kitchen sink and doing the washing up, cords that bind tighter when he sees the Hogwarts crest stamped on the envelope. Nothing much that’s good news gets to him these days. And especially from Hogwarts—

Has something happened to Harry? The last task of the Triwizard? Oh god, today, he’d forgotten, and of course it would be, because trouble, or, more accurately, the viler sorts of dark magic, didn’t seem the least bit capable of leaving the poor boy alone for more than a minute at a time and this had always been a perfect set-up for it.

_The most anticipated of our fears has come to pass_ , reads Dumbledore’s note. _Expect a visitor._

If Harry was hurt, thinks Remus, surely— surely Dumbledore would tell him. So he must be fine. 

He tilts the envelope upside down, wondering if— that can’t be all, and another piece of paper falls out of it. 

Someone— Minerva it must be, he recognises her schoolteacher handwriting, as straightforward and no-nonsense today as it was twenty years ago— has written him a note, on the back of some cheap lined paper that must be ripped out of a Muggle exercise book.

_Remus;_

_Forgive me for the shortness of this letter, but we’re in chaos around here and I don’t have very much time. Also, regarding the matter of security, the less said truly is the better._

_Firstly, Harry is safe, don’t worry. Or, alternatively, you_ can _worry, but he’s coping as anyone could expect him too, and as far as all of us know in no more immediate danger. The third task went badly wrong, as I’m sure you’ve gathered from the timing of this correspondence, but your visitor will probably be able to give you more details _once he shows up_ , and more safely too._

_It may be a few days: there are a number of errands he has to run before he’ll be able to make it to you, but this visitor is quite well known for his persistence. Like a dog with a bone, some might say._

_Regards,_

_Minerva_

Thank god, he thinks. And then— oh, _god_.

He reads Dumbledore’s note again, then Minerva’s, and puts them down very carefully on the bench to pour himself a glass of water from the tap.

_The most anticipated of our fears_ — Voldemort, it must be. After last June, with Peter, the Quidditch World Cup, it was only a matter of time— this had never been anything but a matter of time, if one listened to Dumbledore. 

And fuck if he doesn’t wish he’d been wrong, just this once, catastrophically paranoid or too clever for his own good. 

But Dumbledore has been callous, and he has been foolish and he has even sometimes been wrong, or cruel, or certainly too clever for others’ good, but Voldemort’s return has never really been anything but an eventuality. They’ve all known it, ever since he’d vanished into nothing nearly a decade and a half ago, but still— holding off the inevitable with the force of your refusal to believe in it has always been popular, in certain circles.

What to do, Remus thinks, when you’ve just received the worst news of the past decade. Voldemort has returned. It’s monstrous: the worst news, swallowing down all the light in the kitchen like it’s a real _thing_ , gasping and hungry for all the easy luxuries of life, just like it was last time.

Which— what to do, what to do. He has more experience with earth-shattering bad news than he needs, but as for how to deal with it he’s flying as blind as anyone else.

He thinks: make tea, if it’s possible, sit down with it, try very hard not to think about the future. 

It doesn’t help, but sometimes there is nothing much else to do, and at least it will keep your hands occupied. He takes a drink of the glass of water that had been sitting forgotten on the bench, and switches the kettle on.

Remus sits at the little bay window at the other end of the house, looking out to sea over a scraggly, furze-covered cliff edge. The flowers are less bright than they were even a week ago, fading with the summer as it heats the earth and air, but they’re still almost overpowering in places, toxic-waste yellow blooms from dull spiked stems. 

He really wants a cigarette; it’s a pity he quit, and that the store in the village is so far away. He takes slow sips of his tea, and dwells on the past instead. 

But, in the back of his mind, ever larger— the second part of the letter. _Like a dog with a bone,_ Minerva writes. _Your visitor._ They’re sending Sirius here— to him, this cottage on the cliff edge, where the sky always seems closer to the sea and you know very well where your place is in the midst of all of it. 

Then: _He can’t come here_ , Remus thinks, then, bizarrely, _the house is a wreck._

Then he laughs, a shocked little huff of a breath, accompanied by a grin that goes stale almost immediately. 

He isn’t wrong though really, about the house. It has been badly served by his long periods of absence over the past few years, and he’s never had the time nor the inclination to do anything about the thick layer of dust that’s built up in every corner, or the cobwebs in the rafters, in the gaps behind bookcases and in the corners.

He’s going to have to clean the Muggle way, he thinks, eyeing up a particularly grimy corner. Magic only goes so far with dirt like this, and besides— there’s something to be said for the satisfaction of working by your own hands to shift the fabric of the world around you into something you might like more, rather than bending it all to under your will with a simple _flick!_ of the wrist. 

Remus finished his tea in contemplative silence, allows himself a sigh, and goes to fetch the cleaning products from underneath the laundry sink. He thinks he might start with the kitchen, moving on the living room hopefully before lunch and the bedrooms in the afternoon. He knows it’s wishful thinking, but it never hurt to try.

After lunch— so far he’s only managed to clean the kitchen cupboards— Remus walks round to inspect the outside of the cottage, and is grateful at least that his charmwork on the exterior of the house has held up: waterproofing spells, protections on the painted roof against the salt of the sea breeze, and some enchantments around the foundations to keep out vermin. He wonders idly if that applies to Animagi, and feels a shiver run down his spine. There is no place for Peter here, even the thought of him. 

The garden’s messier than he ever should have allowed it to become, but he thinks it can wait. Sirius will just have to deal with the flowers that have long ago broken free of the constraints of their beds, the weeds and the overlong grass and the furze that’s creeping a little too far over the path down the cliff to the sea.

Remus doesn’t think he’ll mind; thorn scratches to the hands and ankles are hardly the worst thing either of them have suffered in their lifetimes. He fights through some overgrown plants to go stand in the middle of the tiny clearing he thinks was once the circle where his grandmother used to like to drag a chair out to and sit in the afternoon sun. 

It feels strange to think about Sirius here, the possibility of his walking on this not-quite domesticated earth and how he might laugh at the way Remus has all his books organised by subject, and alphabetised by author’s surname within that grouping, from one of the times he was drunk and morose and feeling especially pedantic.

If it feels strange to think about Sirius here, it feels stranger still to finally allow himself this hope, after so long, and even now it’s painfully tentative, in his usual fashion like allowing himself to experience the feeling in all its fullness might ruin any chances he has of what he hopes for actually coming to pass. It’s the sort of jinx that his mum used to believe in, distinctly Muggle superstition she’d imparted on her son even as he’d declared, with all the arrogance of an eight year old, that it wasn’t real and he wasn’t going to believe in it.

_Magic doesn’t work like that_ , he’d told her. She’d laughed. _No, it doesn’t,_ she said. _You’d know that better than me, though, and sometimes— well, what something actually is doesn’t matter as much as what you end up making of it._

He’s always felt a bit closer here, to his mum, more like her and his grandmother too than his father, the isolated old man in the terraced apartment that he’s become, living with only his books and old records and collections of magical fossils for company.

Remus feels at home here, in this house like an old witch’s cottage from a fairytale. It had never been owned or lived in by anyone with a shred of magical blood till it came into his own hands, but it still seems to maintain,if not any sort of real magic of its own, then at least a certain disconnect from either the rush and harshness of the Muggle world or the odd, stiff idiosyncrasy of the magical. 

This is a place where the past tends to creep up behind you, rest its hand on your shoulder and whisper in your ear about slow summers long gone now and the ones you somehow managed to miss, the moments of happiness you did manage to snatch from the jaws of un-luck, with the apple tree you used to climb when you were a child and a path down the cliff to the sea, and then anywhere imaginable. 

Some whispers are darker than others. That tree isn’t any more than a pile of dead branches in a corner of the garden now; Remus checked. And whispers like Voldemort, or the suggestion from earlier of Peter Pettigrew crawling in through the walls of the house. He tries not to dwell there, instead allowing the comfort of familiarity and the sun close themselves around him like a well-woven blanket. 

Remus spends the rest of the afternoon cleaning out the kitchen, moving on to the living room as the sun starts to set and falling onto the sofa, exhausted, at about ten.

He wakes up the next day with a crick in his neck he’s sure he’ll be suffering with for the next week, and the telltale full-moon ache embedded deep in his joints. It’s well enough that he got as much done yesterday as he did then, he’s not going to be in much of a state to do anything for the next few days. He might try to go for a proper shop, at the supermarket in town, or maybe just cleaning the shower, and airing out the bedroom, changing the sheets.

It’s all quite— he thinks about sending an owl to Dumbledore, asking if there’s anything he can do in the meantime, but he’s also quite happy just to stay here and think, to allow the beginnings of the summer heat to seep under his skin and the terror of the awaiting chaos to fade.

He knows what’s coming— so for now, he braces himself, and he waits.

  

&&&

  

It’s quiet at night, here— it’s quiet during the day as well, but nighttime has a stillness all its own, one that can never quite be replicated under the light of the sun. The tide is just past high on the rocks below the cottage, dark blue and clear under the early summer starlight, moon heavy in the sky only two days past full. Remus imagines he can hear sighs of relief in the waves hissing against the cliff face below, gravity strain of fullness finally receding and all things under its sway once again allowed to pull back, into their easier shapes and their calmer ones.

The gravity of other things though is as strong as ever, and he feels it in the wind that blows in off the ocean and up over the cliffs, picking up with the setting of the sun, in the rustle of the trees in the garden and the gentle whoosh of cars on the road two hundred yards from the house, thinking of Dumbledore’s message from six days ago and weary feet treading gravel-rough over the ground, and Remus has tried very hard to learn not to hope, never to trust in his own instincts, but still, still, some things are stronger than that.

_Tonight_. He can feel it at the edges of his eyelids, just out of reach at the tip of his tongue.

His third mug of tea is going cold on the table in front of him when the knock comes at the door, quiet like it might be by accident, but he starts like it’s a battering ram, then somehow manages to draw in breath, and stand up, and walk over to answer the door. 

Sirius is standing right on the doorstep, as the hinges creak open, and for a moment Remus can’t do anything but stare, gripping the doorframe and trying to breathe. Sirius is here. He looks awful, exhaustion and hunger drawing lines around his mouth and eyes, but he’s right there on the doorstep, ragged clothes and mud splatters and all. 

‘Come in?’ Remus says, and steps away from the door to leave room for Sirius to pass him. 

‘Thank you,’ Sirius says, but doesn't move. ‘Is there—’ he asks a second later, and gestures to his dirt caked boots.

‘Just out the door is fine,’ says Remus faintly. It’s all so stiltingly polite, he hardly knows where to keep his hands. 

Sirius bends down to unlace his boots, and Remus starts worrying at a hole near the end of one of his sleeves.

'Would you like a shower?’ Remus asks when Sirius stands back up again, instead of anything more substantive, and tries again to get a good look at Sirius, taking in more of the lines and hollows and dirt on his face. He looks rough, tired, in dire need of a wash and a good few weeks rest, more than one or two square meals. ‘It looks like you need one.’

‘Please,’ Sirius says. ‘I haven’t washed since before I left Manchester.’

His smile turns sadder, and twists peculiarly around the edges. ‘Dumbledore told you I was coming, I assume?’

Remus nods. ‘Of course.’

‘Of course,’ says Sirius. There is a certain amount of accusation in his tone, which Remus chooses to ignore. 

‘The bathroom’s the first door on your right,’ he says instead. ‘If you want the loo though, it’s out the back door and to the left, the pale blue door with a handle in the middle of it.’ 

Sirius nods. ‘Okay.’

‘The towels are in the cupboard behind the door.’

‘Good,’ says Sirius. ‘I’ll just—’

‘Yeah. I—’

‘Thanks,’ says Sirius, and walks across the kitchen to the door Remus had pointed to, oddly fragile-shouldered in his posture, bare feet pressing uncertainly down on the floorboards as he walks. 

Remus goes back to the table, and settles down to wait with his mug of tea. He listens to the soft rush of the water in the bathroom faucets and the steady _tick— tock— tick—_ of the old clock on the wall. He puts the kettle on to boil again, finds the teabags and two mugs and places them on the bench, and settles back down at the table. The bathroom floor creaks, and Remus thinks back to the days when this was a routine, Sirius in the shower and Remus making tea, waiting for him to finish with a crossword at the kitchen table, and he wonders—

_Tick— tock—_

The kettle boils, and Remus pours water into the mugs, steam unfurling out of their mouths as they sit heavy on the bench.

Sirius walks into the room in clean clothes with wet hair, shaking his head like a dog just come out of the ocean— still! Remus thinks, somehow, god, and he resists the urge to smile— and he sees that the legs of the trousers are rolled up at the bottom to keep them off the floor. He’d forgotten that, that he’s taller than Sirius. He blinks.

‘I made tea,’ he says. ‘It’s just there, on the bench,’ and Sirius gives him an odd look as he takes the mug and sits down opposite Remus.

Remus counts up to another ten _tick— tocks—_ of the old clock.

‘How have you been?’ Sirius asks, falsely light, holding his mug in front of him, two hands clasped around its warmth. Before now, Remus hasn’t had space in his head to notice how rough Sirius's voice is, and he’s distracted for a moment by the rasping hollowness before he realises that the words had been a question.

‘I—’ he starts, and can’t remember the words he’d been meaning to finish the sentence with. Had he ever decided on a response? Were there words to be found?

He pauses, looking at Sirius, who is barely three feet away from him, looking like the dead and sitting at his _kitchen table,_ for fuck’s sake, and he’s drinking _tea_ , looking at him like he thinks it’s possible nothing’s changed at all in the past fourteen years. The reality of it, the absurdity, it all hits him like a car crash.

‘Fuck,’ says Remus, quietly, then again: _‘Fuck._ You _bastard_.’

He starts laughing, at first soft and then hiccoughing and painful, and he might be crying too and this is too much for him, he’s thirty-four years old for fuck's sake, then he hears Sirius laughing, sandpaper on wood, and he looks up to see him looking haggard and old and nearly past sanity and laughing, and he never thought he’d be able to see this again so he reaches a hand out across the worn tabletop to grip at Sirius's.

‘I didn’t think you’d come back,’ he says, struggling for air and laughing between phrases, ‘after that night at Hogwarts, and then—’

‘Fuck,’ Sirius rasps, ‘I didn’t— I didn’t think you’d want me to.’

‘How could I— Sirius.’ He takes a long, shuddering breath, pulls Sirius's hand towards him. ‘I didn’t, for awhile. Last year, after everything that happened, I didn’t know—’

‘I thought you’d write, at least,’ Sirius says.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry—’

‘I’m sorry too,’ says Sirius. ‘I could’ve—’

‘You shouldn’t’ve had to,’ says Remus, ‘I was the one who should’ve—’

‘Oh, save it,’ says Sirius, barking out the bitter imitation of his earlier laugh. ‘We’re a mess, always have been and nothing much we can do about it now.’

‘I thought—’

‘I’m not useless, you know,’ says Sirius. ‘Even after— Azkaban does a real number on you, you might have heard, but even after that— I’m still not useless. I could have sent a letter, Remus, I did plenty of others. You’re not solely responsible’

‘Sorry,’ says Remus. ‘I never meant to—’

‘Well, funny how the things you don’t _mean_ can still come back and bite you, isn’t it? Or more to the point, other people.’ His voice has the same bite as his laugh. ‘Don’t worry; I’ve still got enough faults for the both of us,’ he says, and grins more softly. 

‘And I’m afraid I’ve only gotten worse too,’ says Remus. He tries for a smile; it comes out rather flat, a little wonky around the edges. 

‘All’s fair in love and war,’ says Sirius. ‘Or the exact opposite, maybe. But at least, with us both all the way out here, we won’t have to inflict ourselves on the general population of well-rounded human beings.’

‘At least there's that,’ says Remus. His ribs hurt, unused to laughter, and he’s still gripping Sirius's hand.

 There’s more to say, going back fifteen years, twenty— _how, why, what were you thinking, what was I thinking, and when did everything go wrong for you it can’t just have been me that was miserable, were we really that young, did you really care, how, why, do you think we ever had a chance at all_ — but for now he stays silent, and they finish their tea, and they don’t move any more than they have to.

It’s quiet, they’re quiet with each other, but Remus thinks that he could settle into this, maybe. And that it will get better anyway, and that even if it didn’t he’d live with it, probably, has there ever really been a choice? 

It must be nearly midnight when they finally break contact. In the end it’s Remus who stands up first, the scrape of the chair on the tiles unexpected in the quiet of the night. Sirius looks up as Remus severs their one point of contact, blank-faced in what isn’t quite shock, only unexpected, tiny loss. 

‘I thought we could— bed,’ says Remus. ‘Not— you know. But there’s only mine, and I’m tired—’

Sirius smiles wanly. ‘Bed sounds fantastic, actually,’ he says. ‘Come to think of it, I’m, ah—’ he breaks off for a yawn so deep Remus can almost feel his ribs cracking from across the room— ‘I’m knackered.’

‘Did you walk, from Scotland?’ says Remus. 

‘Mostly,’ says Sirius. ‘Being Padfoot makes it easier. And I stopped in with Andromeda, up north, for a while. ’ 

‘Alright,’ says Remus, and then yawns himself. ‘I won’t wake you up in the morning then if you don’t steal the covers in the middle of the night.’

Sirius smiles. ‘You know I can’t help it,’ he says. 

‘I won’t really wake you up,’ says Remus. 'I mean— no promises, but—'   


‘Look, stop fussing, come on,’ says Sirius, standing up from the table very slowly and moving across the room to the door to the corridor. He yawns again as he reaches the doorframe. ‘I’m actually going to fall over unconsciousif I don’t somehow get a pillow somewhere in the vicinity of under my head about five minutes ago. It’s up the stairs, isn't it?’

Remus nods. 

‘Brilliant,’ says Sirius, and Remus watches as he pulls himself up the narrow staircase, following him only a few steps behind.

By the time Remus has managed to pull on pyjamas— downstairs, in the bathroom— clean his teeth, and make his way back up to the bedroom, Sirius is fast asleep, face down on the top of the covers with his head buried in the pillow. 

Remus ignores the surge of unease he feels, at the tips of his fingers and sending little shoots of it up his arms and down through his spine, fusing into a small knot of tension he can’t quite shake in the middle of his ribcage. 

He shakes his head to clear it, and pulls the covers up over Sirius before getting into his own side of bed. This has already gone better than expected, he thinks. They’ll— they’ll manage. They’ve always managed, until they didn’t anymore and everything went all to hell, but still— they’re older now, probably worse off but at least they know the pitfalls, sort of, and— and— 

Despite his tiredness, sleep is a long time in coming. 

 

&&&

 

Remus wakes up with the first of the sunrise to leave Sirius sleeping on his own, and walks down to the kitchen to make himself a piece of toast and a cup of tea, and to get started on the proofreading for someone’s Defense manuscript, an extremely poorly spelled but overall not ill-considered treatise on common magical menaces and the easiest ways to be rid of them. 

Sirius walks down the stairs as he’s just starting on the section about Boggarts.

‘Did you know,’ starts Remus, as he hears Sirius’s footsteps on the floorboards at the other side of the room. ‘Did Harry tell you about the time Neville Longbottom turned a Boggart into Snape with Augusta’s hat and clothes on?’

‘No,’ says Sirius. He sounds distant, indifferent, and when Remus looks over at him he’s standing at the kitchen bench and staring out the window with the air of scattered, gloomy elegance Remus is fairly sure he used to practice in the mirror, back at Hogwarts and well into the days of their ill-fated first flat, but he has now grown into properly. Remus is not altogether sure than he likes it.  

‘Are you alr—?’

‘Fine,’ says Sirius. ‘Where do you keep the mugs?’

‘Top cupboard,’ says Remus. ‘Are you sure—’

Sirius sighs dramatically, and opens the cupboard door with unnecessary force. 

Remus rolls his eyes and goes back to his manuscript. He’s not sure why he’s surprised at the sudden onset of Sirius’s bad mood. This is Sirius, after all, who feels things as strongly as he does fleetingly, and a new, older Sirius on top of it, fourteen unhappy years later and really, he can’t have expected anything different.

He sighs, and sets himself to work with the red pen, trying to ignore Sirius banging around in the kitchen and then, when he stops, trying to avoid the oppressive air of too-contained motion that he seems to carry with him wherever he goes. 

_The most well known way to deal with the Boggart is of cors the Riddikulus charm. Wilst there have been alternativs used accros the ages—_

Remus finishes with the manuscript that night, and then spends two days in the garden with Sirius haunting every shadow and corner of the house like he isn't sure of his limbs anymore. 

He weeds up the old veggie patch down the road side of the section, and he clips back the path down to the sea, allowing the gorse prickles to scratch at his wrists, dig into his skin. His back aches, but he pushes his hands elbows deep into dirt he could’ve shifted with the flick of his wand, pulling out from the funny old ledge at the top of the path iris bulbs he wants to put back in under the windows. 

 He likes gardening more than he remembers— the privilege of age, he thinks, the years between him now and being press-ganged into pushing the wheelbarrow up and down the garden for his mother— and it makes a convenient escape from the house, when he needs it.

It’s all very— Sirius is almost always silent, flickering like static, but the summer is drier and harsher by the day and more and more comforting, like all the worst things, the things he doesn’t like to think about, should be driven out by the force of the heatwave alone. And it makes a strange juxtaposition, Sirius sitting cold and unnerving in the face of the ceaseless drive of heat. 

Remus watches him, and he makes dinner, and he weeds the flowerbeds down the ocean side of the house, and he wakes up next to Sirius lying next to him on the same bed, sleeping or lying awake with his back turned to Remus. And they don’t talk much, and Remus cuts back the magnolia in the back garden and sometimes an owl comes in for one or both of them, and sometimes Remus takes long walks down to the next village over, and sometimes Sirius walks the little track down the cliff to the beach and sits out on one of the rocks in near the shoreline for hours at a time.

It’s all very, half there, half not. 

Remus thinks about the past— their past, their shared past— and wonders, well, still, _how_.

Even when they were happy, they weren’t, because Remus didn’t understand how to want something without being too afraid to touch, and Sirius wasn’t sure how to love gently enough not to destroy, and together they’d made such a ruin of it Remus isn’t sure now how they managed to stay together at all for even five minutes, let alone several years when they thought they’d liked it.

There had been a lot of laughter, he supposes. It felt like it was chemical necessity, sometimes, for them to be together. And on some level— maybe one that never much allowed to see a lot of daylight— they both wanted to do right by each other, the rest of the world as well. 

On a more day to day basis: good sex and a propensity for the same kind of jokes. They knew what to expect, even if it was the twist of a knife between the ribs.

This isn’t the sort of thing you talk about with anyone, even, maybe especially, ever, with the one other person who might have a hope of understanding. 

Which is probably why, a week later and just after dinner, Remus brings out a bottle of firewhiskey and plonks it down on the table between them.

Sirius understands what he’s trying to say without a word, and gives him a caustic grin in the dim of the kitchen lights, then nods at the mugs in Remus’s hands. 

‘Nostalgic for our misspent youth?’ he asks. ‘I’d’ve thought you’d’ve moved on to proper glasses by now.’

Remus smiles back in a similarly tense vein. ‘I have, on the whole. But there’s the unfortunate side effect, with a glass— you can see exactly how much you’re drinking, and if, well— I’m barely ever doing it for _fun_ , this stuff’s foul anyway— but I’d rather not know.’

Sirius shrugs. ‘Hand me one over then,’ he says, holding a hand out across the table. Remus gives him the mug, and sits down himself, reaching for the bottle and pouring himself enough of the mug that, all going to plan, he doesn’t think there’s any danger of him being able to remember this too clearly come the morning.

‘Here’s to getting drunk,’ says Sirius, raising his mug, after he’s poured out his own measure of whiskey, ‘in place of ever learning to deal with your feelings like an adult.’

’To getting drunk,’ says Remus, and takes a large mouthful of his drink, trying not to gag on the burn in his throat and the chemical taste of it.

Sirius splutters a little on the other side of the table. Remus tries not to smirk, but he thinks it must come out anyway.

‘Oh, fuck off,’ says Sirius. ‘You’d be coughing too if you hadn’t had a drink in fourteen years, and then some wanker hands you a mug full of this and tells you to drink it. Are you sure it’s even safe for human ingestion?’

Remus shrugs. ‘Probably,’ he says. ‘It gets the job done.’ He takes another swallow, and this time has to suppress the shiver that runs up and down his spine. 

Sirius looks down at his mug, and follows suit with only a minimum of coughing.

‘When’s it going to kick in, do you think?’ he asks. ‘I can only take so much of this, sober.’

‘Soon, I hope,’ says Remus, with a grimace. He takes another gulp. The inside of his mouth is getting numb; he hopes that it isn't a sign of imminent death by terrible-whiskey-poisoning.  

Sirius is looking increasingly combative, spoiling for a fight like he used to when he was younger. Anyone, anything, just give him an excuse to yell or throw a punch.

‘Well, we might as well get right down to the argument, while we wait,’ says Sirius, sitting back and crossing his arms across his chest. ‘I want to know why you keep looking at me like that.’

‘Like what?’ says Remus. 

‘Like you think I’m, I don’t know— like it’s easier to think I’m not there, sometimes. Or when you do look, like I’m made of my mum’s best china and as likely to bite.’ 

‘I don’t—’

‘You do,’ says Sirius. ‘And I know you know you do, you’re not stupid, anymore than I’m about to shatter into a million tiny glittering pieces, or join the Ministry of Magic Law Enforcement Squad tomorrow.’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Remus. ‘I’m still, getting used to it. You, this whole—’

‘I am too, but I don’t try to treat _you_ like you’re a sort of— weird ghost, floating about the place, like I’m not even—’

‘You don’t even try to talk to me!’ says Remus. ‘Sometimes you _are_ like a ghost. You just sit there, and you barely move, and if I didn’t look at you carefully I’d convince myself you were all some awful, stupid figment of my imagination and have to lose it altogether.’

Sirius is quiet. The silence stretches, and Remus is sure that a bit of the alcohol must have hit him by now, because his head feels fuzzy like it didn't five minutes ago. He takes another gulp of his drink. Sirius follows suit, and they sit in the quiet for another few minutes. 

Sirius is staring down at his hands and his mug, seemingly deep in thought. Then: ‘I am here,’ he says. ‘And I don’t— you’re still wrong, you know, about not even, _trying_ , because even if you’re not sure of something— if it’s what you really want, what you— you can’t just sort of— stare at it like it’s some beetle pinned under one of those glass cases, and try to move around it to see if it’s really there, you have to just— I’m here, I know that and you know that and all that’s stopping you from properly acting like it is you’re too cowardly to do anything else but what you’ve already done, right up until it all gets ripped from you again, but you have to take it, and you can’t half-arse around this, you can’t, it’s worse, and I won’t—' 

He stops for breath, and looks Remus dead in the eye. ‘You know what? You’re fucked, Remus. If you never even start to consider the _possibility_ that something might happen you’re actually allowed to _have_ , you’re fucked.'

He pauses to breathe, again. ‘And I’m just fucked, full stop,’ he says, ‘so we make a good match. I’m sure you’ve said so yourself.’

‘I have,’ says Remus. He takes another drink.

‘You know—’ he says, after another jagged silence. ‘I mean— sometimes, I used to think this all the time actually, sometimes I think you broke something in me, Sirius. So that I’d hardly know how to— _breathe_ , or tie my shoelaces, without you around.' 

He stops again, wondering if he should stop, and let this all rest in the unburied past like he's been so happy to leave it all these years, but then-- no.

'And I've been fine,' he says '—not, brilliant, but— without you, for years and years and then some, I've been fine, because eventually I just learnt to work around the bits of me that weren't alright, I think.’

He can feel a heaviness in the way his tongue is moving, behind his eyes. He keeps talking. 

‘And I thought, if you came back— except I didn’t really think about that, much, it was too far off, and too big—if you came back, I thought we could try again and do it better, and I thought I’d be— at least I’d be able not to keep doing the exact same _stupid_ things that I’ve always done, that never worked out, and I just— 

'I keep _thinking_ , and I know what I should be doing, but then I don’t do it, and now I think I’m going to have to relearn to be fine again, with all the bits of you that got tangled up in me as well as all the rest, and I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. And I want— and I thought, we'd get _better_ as we got older, not retreading the same ground and—and—’

‘And pissing on it, probably,’ says Sirius. 

‘It’s a mess,’ says Remus. He wants to cry, a bit. 

‘I'm drunk now, I think,’ Sirius says a moment later, ‘or a bit, at least.’ He stills, and closes his eyes, drifting off a little sideways as he sits upright at his chair. ‘Yep,’ he says, and leans back into the seat again, still with eyes shut and a strange, peaceful smile on his face. ‘It’s been a while.’

‘I’d heard,’ says Remus. He takes another mouthful of his drink, then another, sending more little icy shocks racing through his system.

‘I wouldn’t have meant to break anything,’ says Sirius. He drink. ‘Not _you_ , anyway. I don’t think I really ever could work out— I sort of just, do things. And the consequences are for later, and it’s always bad, but I think I tried when it came to you and James and Harry and even fucking _Peter_ , and Regulus, once— but I keep trampling all over everything by accident, and I really need to _not_ , anymore. I’m too old for it, and Merlin knows you and Harry deserve better by now.’ 

‘How is Harry?’ Remus asks, after yet more time has passes. 

‘Okay, I think,’ says Sirius. ‘Insofar as— Dumbledore sent him back to the Dursleys, did you know? The old bastard. Those people don’t deserve him.’

‘Sirius,’ says Remus.

‘Don’t tell me he knows best,’ Sirius says, dull, angry look in his eyes. ‘They’re awful, Remus.’

‘I know,’ says Remus. ‘I met them at the funeral, and the husband— Vernon? I think he came about this close to spitting in my face, and all I tried to do was ask if they’d need any help with Harry— I had some toys, Christmas presents I brought early, Muggle ones because Lily was a bit funny about magic around the baby sometimes, you remember?’

‘I wish I could’ve taken him,’ Sirius says. ‘I tried, actually. Hagrid came to pick him up, from the rubble— of their house, and I told him I’d take him, that’s what James made me godfather for, in case something happened, but he said no, Dumbledore’s orders and all that— it was before Peter, though. And didn’t that little rat ruin everything, better than I could ever have planned it.’

‘Do you ever wonder how he managed it?’ Remus asks. 

‘I try not to think about him, if I can,’ says Sirius. ‘He knew all our secrets better than we did, probably. Knew how to use them.’

Remus nods. His head is quite heavy now too, and his hands, and when he thinks it feels slow and lumbering inside his head. ‘I thought so too,’ says Remus. ‘He was smarter than we ever gave him credit for.’

‘I was so pleased with myself, when we thought up the plan with the Secret Keeper,’ says Sirius. ‘I was so clever, and no-one in the whole wide world would ever be able to guess whose secret it was, and it was going to make everything okay.’

He sighs. ‘I should’ve known, the second Peter actually agreed to do it,’ he says. ‘That snivelling, _cowardly_ little rodent— he’d never have done anything that didn’t play right into his own self-interest, and I’d forgotten that he was an actual, person, not just someone I could use to prove how clever I was, and how good, and unlike my _fucking_ family I was.

‘One day I’ll get him,’ says Sirius, with a vicious grin. Remus imagines he can see blood dripping from the mouth of a dog, and some small, limp corpse on the ground in front of him. 

‘Maybe,’ he says, fighting down the instinctive surge of bloodlust that comes with the image, the desire for revenge he knows he has to suppress, not to bite and kill and slash and burn like he wants to. He drains the last of his cup, and shakes his head to clear it as he places the mug back down on the table.

‘I just want to know,’ says Remus, ‘I need to know, why you thought I was the one who was selling us all out to Voldemort— we were still _living_ together, Sirius, and I thought— even if you didn’t seem to _like_ me, most of the time, I thought we were still— us, and I thought you still would’ve trusted me enough to know that I wouldn’t— I would’ve _died_ for you, Sirius. Any of you. You knew that, and you still thought that I would have given you over to Voldemort— just like that, never mind that you and James and Lily and Harry were all I had that was actually good in the world, and I would have done anything to keep you safe, _anything_.’

‘For what it’s worth,’ Sirius says. ‘I would’ve died for you too, traitor or not.’ He sighs again, and lets it all out hissing through his teeth.  ‘In the end I don’t even think I cared, or really believed it if I did. I don’t know. I wasn’t very nice, by then, or thinking very clearly either.’

‘I’m sorry I never tried to get you out of Azkaban,’ says Remus suddenly. 

‘So am I,’ says Sirius. ‘It wouldn’t have done anything, but—’ he trails off. ‘It’s alright,’ says Sirius. He looks exhausted now, even more so than he usually does, all the tension in his limbs that usually keeps him upright, gone, the hollows under his eyes carved out deep, almost down to the bone.

‘No it isn’t,’ says Remus, feeling laughter bubbling up inside him, filling up the well of horror that usually sits in the middle of his ribcage. ‘It’s all shit again, nothing’s fine, Voldemort’s back and Harry’s got to be the one fighting him, and half the people we used to know are dead and it’s a miracle we aren’t and if we get out of this in one piece it’ll be another three, and I’m terrified all the time, about almost everything. But yes, it’s alright. It’s fine. It’s all absolutely fine!'

He doesn’t think he’s making sense anymore, words spilling all over the table from his lips like deformed marbles, rusted coins.

‘Well, fair enough,’ says Sirius, after a while, and he yawns hugely.  ‘Oh, fuck, I need to go to bed,’ he says. ‘I hope that last bit wasn't important, I don't think I understood a word of it. Was I always this awful at holding my liquor?’

Remus yawns himself, and closes his eyes as his temples start to throb in time with his pulse. 'No,' he says, the burst of hysteria draining as quickly as it'd come. ' Probably. Do you want a glass of water?’ 

 

&&&

 

Over the next week, something unfurls between them, tides under a waxing moon, flowers from the bud. Seagulls carry on outside the windows, wheeling and chaotic in the air, and Sirius starts to soften— at the same time he seems to solidify, a process which seems almost inexplicable, beautiful.

‘I missed you,’ Sirius says one night, while the end credits are playing for one of the awful soaps Remus likes to watch sometimes, when he’s in the mood for pointless drama. ‘It seems so useless, to say that, because really, what’s a one gaping hole in the middle of your life look like when you don’t even have any life at all anymore— but I still missed you.’

‘I—’ says Remus, startled to feel the lump forming at the back of his throat. ‘You too.’ 

He glances sideways at Sirius, the profile of his face silhouetted against soft yellow light from the lamp beside him, eyes on the television and mouth set in an indecisive frown.

He’s still handsome, thinks Remus. Nothing he hasn’t noticed before, even with Sirius too thin and too tired and sometimes too painful for him to really look at, but the bone structure is still there, his lips still the right shape and the eyelashes, long and dark around the same grey eyes, only older and sadder and maybe angrier too.

‘Even when I thought,’ says Remus, ‘that you were the reason everything had gone so horribly, badly wrong, I missed you too. Maybe even more than otherwise, because of that— like I'd lost you twice, once with James and Lily and Peter, and once before that when I didn't even know.' 

The jingle for some brand of snack bars that Remus has never heard of fills the silence.

‘Can—’ Sirius says, and then stops, clears his throat and turns his head a little to look at him more carefully.  ‘I’d like to kiss you, if that’s alright,’ he says. 

Remus freezes, heartbeat drumming up under his chest.

‘Sirius,’ he says. ‘Sirius. You— of course.’

A smile flickers across Sirius’s face, and he turns to face Remus, then before Remus has time to react, he leans forward with eyes closed and his head tilted to one side to press his mouth to Remus’s, cautious and just barely warm. His lips are dry, and his nose presses against the side of Remus’s face. It isn’t— they’ve had better kisses, Remus thinks as Sirius pulls back very slightly, but he likes this one more, he thinks, than any of them maybe. 

Remus leans forward this time and deepens the kiss, bringing a hand up to cup the back of Sirius’s head and to tangle in his hair. Sirius smells like his shampoo; it’s surprisingly pleasant, on another person. Sirius wets his lips with his tongue, and opens his mouth slightly against Remus’s.

‘Mm,’ says Remus, as Sirius pulls him towards him and slips his tongue into his mouth, smooth and wet and still with the faint taste of tea from earlier, the milk sweet and cloying on his breath. They kiss for what feels like an age, one moment sliding into the next as sweetly as their lips do against each other and their fingers do over skin, until Remus’s neck is aching too badly from the angle to keep going, and he pulls away with an apologetic little stroke down the back of Sirius’s neck.

‘I missed that, too,’ says Sirius, a few moments later. His eyes are bright, and his breath shallower than usual and lips wet. ‘Merlin and Morgana, I really did. Remus— I’m— I’m not going to cry, for starters,’ he says, blinking and looking annoyed at himself. ‘And I’m—’

‘Sirius,’ says Remus, and kisses him again on the side of his mouth. He can feel the prickle of tears at the corners of his own eyes now too, and he takes the opportunity to blot at them with the tips of his index fingers. ‘Look, I’m not crying either,’ he says, and fights for a proper smile, no wateriness. ‘And I’m not— I’ve no plans to leave, you especially.’

He kisses Sirius higher up on the cheek, and Sirius smiles, pulling him in for a kiss of his own, full on the lips. ‘I should think not,’ he says as he draws away, eyes still closed and breath a little warm and damp on the side of Remus’s face. Then he opens his eyes, and he’s looking at him with all the softness and fire of a star as seen from earth, and Remus feels his heart thump in his chest, his pulse in his fingers and his ears and the circulation of blood around his whole body, the warmth of the night and the heat where Sirius’s skin is pressed against him. 

‘If you did, I really don’t know what I’d do,’ Sirius says, and straddles him across the knees to kiss him again, and again, and again, till they're both quite out of breath. 

  

&&&

  

One afternoon at the end of the third week, Remus sits on the salt-worn bench out the back of the cottage, watching a storm blowing in from a few kilometres out to sea. The sun glints, shatters off dark ocean waves, the clouds heavy-foreboding and graceful. Rain-edge silver in the outlines and the promise of destruction, new life.

Sirius comes to lean against the rough wall next to where Remus is sitting.

‘Storm,’ he says, nodding out to the horizon.

‘Yes,’ Remus says, and reaches his hand out for Sirius to take, not looking away from the gathering clouds. ‘It’s what I was out here for.’

‘The garden could use the watering,’ Sirius says, and takes his hand, sits down beside him.

‘Yeah,’ Remus says again, and pulls Sirius in closer with an arm around his waist, resting his head on Sirius's shoulder in the space carved out between his neck and collarbone. The side of his neck will ache soon with the stretch of leaning like this, but it doesn’t matter so much as sitting here might.

Sirius remains quiet, if not quite still, foot tapping against the air.

Remus knows this, he thinks. He can feel in his mind all the ridges and roundedness of being together, Sirius restless even in the calm, the gaps between who they were and are and might be still, sitting side by side in their small shelter, on the edge of a cliff and watching the storm roll in to batter them like the tiny creatures that they are, clinging to the surface of the earth and to each other like somehow it save them all.

The first drops of rain fall on the earth ahead of them, sparse and heavy in the freshly dug earth. Sirius turns his head to kiss Remus on the temple, and Remus pulls him in tighter around the waist.

He knows this, this love— and they'd never called it that, before; something about foregone conclusions, something about war, something about fucking— feelings, and time, and always hurting too much to be able to tell up from down, but— _but_ — this love, now, struggling into the light.

‘I like this,’ says Remus, which isn't enough, but feels like all he wants to manage for now.

‘The rain?’ says Sirius. ‘The fact we’re both about to get soaked to within an inch of both our lives? Or is it the thunder. I know you always liked the thunder.’

‘I like this,’ Remus says again. ‘Being here. I like you.’

‘I should hope so,’ says Sirius. ‘I wouldn’t get myself soaked in the rain for just anyone.’

‘Shh,’ says Remus. ‘You don’t have to do that you know. It doesn’t have to be a joke.’

Remus feels Sirius's breath pause mid-exhalation, feels his body still just for a moment.

‘I like this too,’ he says.

The rain is picking up; droplets roughening on the surface of the water below, the cloud-darkness looming over the whole coast now.

‘Good,’ says Remus. ‘I’d have to be upset if you didn’t.’

‘I like you,’ says Sirius, in a quieter voice than before. ‘Might love you, even.’

Remus is startled, lost for words and breath. It seems so simple, put like that. _Might love you, even._ Four words, and they don’t sound at all like something that’s been tearing in his guts for a decade and a half.

‘You’re getting sappy,’ Remus says, seconds too late and obvious with it as well.

‘I’ve always been sappy,’ Sirius replies. ‘I just used to care more about hiding it.’

‘I might love you too,’ says Remus before he can stop himself. ‘It’s— oh, christ—’

‘It’s fucking awful, isn’t it.’ Sirius huffs out a breath in laughter.

‘A bit, yeah.’ Remus smiles ruefully. ‘I was going to say— long-delayed.’

Sirius snorts. ‘We got here in the end,’ he says. 

‘Wherever here is,’ says Remus after a pause.

‘Well,’ says Sirius. ‘Your grandmother’s garden, for a start. Professing that we might actually love each other, after— Merlin only knows how many years.’

‘In the middle of a thunderstorm too,’ Remus says. ‘How romantic.’

‘Very romantic,’ says Sirius. ‘Dramatic, as well.’

‘Fitting,’ says Remus. 

‘Obviously,’ says Sirius. ‘Why do it at all, if you aren’t going to go all in.’

‘Could use some more lightning,’ says Remus. ‘Do you think?’ 

As if to prove his point, the sky lights up with a new violence, the thunder rolling in with a vengeance almost without a break. 

‘It’s right on top of us,’ Remus says, looking up to the black clouds above them.

‘Yep,’ says Sirius. ‘Point well proven, I'm sure, whatever it was meant to be. Can we go back inside now?’

Remus looks at him, smiles at the petulance in his expression, and angles his body and head so that he can kiss him on the mouth, full and deep.

‘Anything for you, _dearest_ ,’ he says with a proper grin, standing up to pull Sirius with him. ‘Come on.’

 

&&&

 

The next morning, he wakes up to an arm thrown ungraciously across his waist. It’s Sirius, sleeping sprawled across the bed and halfway out from underneath the covers. Remus sighs into it, turning his his head so he can look at him, still asleep just next to him.

_It'll be better, us like this,_ thinks Remus, unexpectedly tender and then half-ferocious in the early morning light, the sun creeping up across his and Sirius's feet at the bottom of the bed. _It just bloody well has to be, and we’re well past due a bit of luck._ He watches Sirius struggle into wakefulness next to him, blinking against the light spilling in across the bed, the skin of the side of his face creased from the pillow.

They’ve settled further into things now, he thinks. It’s nice. He turns over onto his side to be able to see Sirius more easily.

'Remus,’ Sirius mumbles, and smiles soft into the light of the morning chill.

‘Hey,’ says Remus, and brings his hand up to cup Sirius's jaw with loose fingers. Sirius hasn't bothered to shave for a few days; he can feel the roughness of his stubble against his fingertips.

Sirius nuzzles the side of his face into Remus's hand and makes a muffled little pleased noise.

‘Ridiculous,’ says Remus.

‘You love me,’ says Sirius, with all the delicacy the statement deserves, strange and fragile in between his lips, and then he twists his head around to kiss Remus's fingers where they were resting on the side of his neck.

‘I do,’ says Remus, and leans in to kiss him on the side of his lips. ‘So help me, I do.’

‘I love you too,’ says Sirius, the lines deepening around his eyes and his hand coming up to rest on the side of Remus's neck, over the threadbare softness of his pyjama-clad shoulder.

‘Now, come here,’ he says, pulling himself closer to Remus for a proper kiss, warmth and rough edges and morning clumsiness.

‘Your breath's awful,’ Sirius says when they pull apart, ‘like something died in your mouth.’

‘So's yours,’ says Remus. ‘Let's not get up yet though.’

‘Not yet,’ says Sirius, smiling at him. ‘We have time.’ 

  

 

_**fin** _

 

* * *

 


End file.
